The cowboys’ yells had attracted the attention of others, and soon the course swarmed with excited men and horses, racing toward the scene of pending tragedy.
The bellowing of the bull rumbled faintly above that of pounding hoofs.
These brave men of the plains, in a mission of life and death, drove the rowels into the sides of their steeds.
And then the foremost saw the brute charge, in spite of their yells to turn his attention to them. But even as they looked at the flying bull they saw a human being bound out from the corral across the path of the bull.
It was Skibo!
There the giant negro stood, with tense muscles, slightly crouching, facing the oncoming animal, unarmed.
The bloodshot eyes of the bull caught the new object in its path, and the brute slowed down for reconnaissance. It came to a dead stop within ten feet of the human form which disputed its progress.
But the pause was brief, for the colored man darted in like a flash, and seized the wide-spreadin’, needle-like horns of the bull.
Then began such a struggle for mastery between man and beast as the West had never seen.
It was not the battle of powder, and lead, and steel against brute flesh, but the conflict of brawn and brawn.